French senator lambasts Israeli premier for 'using hunger as a weapon'

PARIS

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will go down in history for "using hunger as a weapon" in Gaza, the president of the ecologist group in the French Senate said Wednesday.

In his speech at the Senate General Assembly, Guillaume Gontard said history books will write that Israel caused an explosion of violence in the Gaza Strip after Oct. 7, 2023.

Noting that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Netherlands has been warning since January that there is a risk of genocide in Gaza, Gontard recalled that EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell recently said that Gaza has “turned into the world's biggest open-air graveyard."

Gontard noted that journalists and doctors have documented the “apocalypse-like” situation in Gaza and said that more children were killed in four months in the enclave than the number of children killed in four years around the world

He also pointed out that the bombardments and hunger have made the region uninhabitable.

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack by Palestinian resistance group Hamas in which nearly 1,200 Israelis were killed.

Nearly 32,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have since been killed in Gaza, and more than 74,000 injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of most food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to ensure its forces do not commit acts of genocide, and guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.